User:Cool3/Desysop

De-sysopped users are taken from Requests for de-adminship. This is not an analysis of what went wrong; I have specifically not attempted to present any judgment of my own on the admin's actions (I have removed, though, desysopping due to compromised accounts). This is instead an analysis of the RfAs of admins who were later desysopped t see what, if anything, we can learn.

Sample


Notes:Users with no RfA removed. User:Guanaco removed; too complicated for our purposes and one removal shouldn't skew results significantly.

Multiple RfAs
'''Many editors are suspicious of candidates who have had multiple RfAs. Are editors with lots of RfAs really more likely to end up as problem admins?'''

The evidence here is somewhat mixed, but on the whole I'm not really seeing any strong correlation between lots of RfAs and a bad admin, although there is some sort of connection. Of the 31 desysopped admins, 6 (19.4%) had multiple RfAs. In the exemplary group, 3 out of 18 admins had multiple RfAs (16.7%). Out of the control group, though, only 2 (10%) had multiple RfAs. I'll leave you to form your own conclusions based on this data, as there is room for interpretation in many directions. On the whole, though this data certainly suggests that reflexively opposing multiple RfA candidates is clearly unjustified.

Experience
'''How long does it take to become good admin material? Are inexperienced admins more likely to end up being desysopped?'''

Because our samples span the entire history of RfA, and standards have changed, straightforward averages are unlikely to be useful in answering this question. A simple examination of the data, just eyeballing it, though seems to show no link between experience and later quality. Just about all of the admins here, in all categories, had what was considered "enough" experience for the time when they were promoted. Candidates with very high levels of experience ended up desysopped (e.g., Rama's Arrow and Bedford) while others with low levels (Cool Hand Luke and Cecropia) ended up in the exemplary sample. There is undoubtedly some minimum level of experience required for adminship, but no evidence here shows that either barely reaching that level or amply exceeding it results in a better administrator.

The Discretion Zone
Are candidates whose RfAs pass in the "discretion zone" (<80% support) more likely to end up as poor administrators?

The data here is really insufficient to render a verdict. Only 4 of the admins studied here passed in the discretion zone. 3 of them came from the desysop group (9.6% of those desysopped) while 1 came from the exemplary group (5.6% of exemplary admins). So yes, there is some suggestion here that "discretion zone" admins are more likely to be desysopped, but it's really hard to form a conclusion on such limited data.

Overall support percentage
'''Beyond the discretion zone, does the overall support percentage matter? Are those who receive more support more likely to turn out as good admins?'''

The answer here is again complicated. 8 of the 31 desysopped admins passed through RfA with unanimous (100%) support. So clearly, it was hard for the RfA !voters to see their future coming.

On average, the desysopped admins received 92.96% support in their RfAs. The exemplary group received 94.64% support in their RfAs. The control group admins received 96.62% support in their RfAs. So for all of the groups, the percentage was in the 90s. The desysopped group did have slightly less support, but hardly to a significant level. Whatever the link between support percentages and outcomes, though, I think it is fairly clear that raising requirements wouldn't do much good. In order to eliminate 50% of the desysopped admins, we would have to raise the requirement in excess of 95% which would also eliminate 39% of the exemplary sample.

Self-noms
'''Many editors regard self nominations with a certain suspicion. Is there reason to believe that editors who self-nominate will make poor admins?'''

It seems that there may some reason for this concern. In the desysop group, nearly 1/3 of editors self-nominated (32%) while in the exemplary group only 11% self-nommed and in the control group 15% self-nommed. This is the most statistically significant finding in this study so far, but we are still dealing with a fairly small set of data.